Friday, April 19, 2013

SAN ONOFRE, HANFORD HELP FUEL ANTI-NUKE INITIATIVE

The operators of both the San Onofre
Nuclear Power Station and the nuclear waste reservation at Hanford, Wash.,
could not be doing better if they actually wanted to promote a new prospective
ballot initiative aimed at keeping San Onofre offline and also shutting down
Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon power plant.

Together, the two big generating
stations produce about 16 percent of California’s electricity when they’re
operating at full blast. And Hanford is America’s largest and most contaminated
nuclear site.

But San Onofre has been shuttered for about 15 months while its
operator, the Southern California Edison Co., tries to replace steam generator
tubes that degraded much more radically than expected and leaked small amounts
of radioactive steam in January of last year.

Meanwhile, at Hanford, a radioactive
tank leaked through much of February, causing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to
worry publicly about other tanks on the reservation, beside the Columbia River.

Nothing could be better for the
sponsors of the California Nuclear Power initiative that has been circulating
since early February.

Davis’ proposal, aimed for the
November 2014 general election ballot, would ban further electricity production
at both San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, which features twin 1,100-megawatt
reactors set along the coast in San Luis Obispo County.

Among other things, the initiative
would demand a formal finding from the state Energy Commission that the federal
government has approved technology for disposal of high-level nuclear waste
“before further electricity production at these plants.” No such technology
currently exists, with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducting a
decades-long search for secure waste disposal sites and some reactors – like
San Onofre and Diablo Canyon – storing waste on-site. For nuclear opponents,
the Hanford leak demonstrates the unreliability of current waste disposal and
storage methods.

So far, the anti-nuclear initiative
has little financing, causing Davis to suggest that at some point he may scrub
the current petition campaign and re-submit a similar initiative in order to stretch
out the current July 8 deadline for gathering the 504,760 voter signatures
needed to place this measure on the ballot.

Even if it gets to the ballot, there
is no guarantee this measure will pass. A similar effort in 1975 lost by a
large margin, even though it came less than two years after exposure of vast
cost overruns at Diablo Canyon, caused in part by a “mirror image” problem –
some key reactor components were essentially installed backwards, causing
delays until 1985 for the first power from the plant.

Even though the 1975 proposition lost,
state legislators the next year slapped a moratorium on new nuclear plants, one
that still stands.

The current measure also faces some
problems with the description the state’s non-partisan legislative analyst hung
on it: “Potentially major impacts on state and local finances…in the form of
decreased revenues and increased costs due to near-term disruptions in the
state’s electricity system and electricity price increases.” No actual price
tag was placed on this.

Negative as that description may be,
it’s still better than what the analyst said about an abortive similar measure
proposed two years ago. At that time, the analyst’s description promised
immediate rolling blackouts with billions of dollars in economic consequences
if the measure passed.

Things definitely worked out that way
last summer as San Onofre was shut down through the summer season, when power
use is heaviest, and there were no brownouts.

Says the California Nuclear Initiative
website, “The emergency actions taken by the state (during last year’s San
Onofre shutdown) have led the California Independent System Operator to predict
the state will enjoy a comfortable, blackout-free summer in 2013 (without San
Onofre’s two units) and that the potential for blackouts will lessen in the
future.”

Despite all this, passage of the
anti-nuclear initiative would be far from certain even if it makes the ballot
next year in this very environmentally conscious state. As in 1975, the
national nuclear industry would pour massive funds into a “no” campaign, using
the legislative analyst’s pessimistic description to stir fears.

The central question in such a
campaign would be one of fear, with trepidation about possible blackouts pitted
against worries about a possible California version of Japan’s March 2011
Fukushima Daiichi disaster and its still-ongoing consequences.

-30-
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most
Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now
available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.